winter

#1249: Winter’s Call

RECORD STORE TALES #1249: Winter’s Call

Fall leaves have changed their color,
Winter’s on its way,
I’m lookin’ for the sunny part of town,
And leaving on, I hear the wicked cold winds call me,
They say, don’t fly away…

I feel it earlier this year.  The chill of the cold.  The dark of the sky.  The dreaded Seasonal Affective Disorder.  It is coming.

What is unexpected about this is that I didn’t have it last year.  I barely felt it the year before.  I can feel it readying its return in 2026.

I think what prompted this was my recent realization that I’ve only gotten a fraction of the things done that I wanted to do this summer.  Many projects started, and without the time left to complete them.  I’m speaking specifically of cottage projects.  My Transformers collection lives there, because it is the best environment for animation.  I did get a lot of animation done this year, and hope to complete at least two more shorts before we close up.  This is a lot less than I had hoped.

We hit several goals.  Food experiments were a success this year.  I haven’t even talked about this stuff here, because I’ve been feeling less shackled to writing (most of my writing has been fiction, with Harrison).  2026 was greeted by a new Napoleon four-burner barbecue, and we just finished off its first wagyu and tomahawk steaks.  Wait until you see some of this stuff!  I have other things that I’ll be presenting in video form, that being my current medium of choice.  I’ve been writing about music since about 1994, but I’ve been making videos even longer.  This summer represented new achievements in the video realm, outside of animation.

In order to make it through winter, I need to focus on creative goals for home.  We just don’t have as much space here at home to do videos the way I want to, so certain projects must take a back seat while I turn to home hobbies.

At home, we took cooking indoors to a massive upgrade by making my own spaghetti sauce from scratch.  There’s no reason not to continue exploring in that direction.  I have to admit, Stanley Tucci’s series Tucci in Italy has been a massive inspiration.  There’s that to remember when the months turn cold.

This is the winter I decided to learn how to draw, and I’m preparing now.  I have two drawing books, that I purchased from Treats & Tales in Kincardine Ontario.  These are How to Draw Comic Book Heroes by Mark Bergin, and 1978’s classic How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, by Stan Lee and John Buscema.  I’m going to buy some drawing supplies and take a shot at it this winter.  I may be in over my head.  I’m not used to drawing; I’ve never been trained and I haven’t attempted drawing since the early 90s.  However, I never said my goal was to draw a comic book.  My goal is to learn how to draw.  So here we go.  That’ll be something to keep me occupied this winter.

I think that’s enough for a start.

 

Example of the kind of videos that work best at the cottage

 

 

 

VIDEO: State of the Rock – Oct 16 2025

A quick update as we head into the final cottage weekend of the season. Grab A Stack of Rock will roll on with some great content this winter and into 2026, but changes are afoot.

#1181: Ice Storm April! [with Dashcam Video]

RECORD STORE TALES #1181: Ice Storm April!

I think one of the greatest reasons that my seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.) has been non-existent this year is the revelation that I can work from home, and when I do it’s not as bad as I feared it would be.  This means if I can avoid driving due to weather, I don’t have to drive.  My work has a good policy on working from home that would give me this flexibility.  After all, when it comes down to brass tacks, the worst part of winter isn’t the weather.  It’s driving in it.  Looking at it from inside is actually kind of fun.

Our spring has been warm/cold off and on, but spring is definitely here.  That means that a few drivers have prematurely taken off their snow tires.  Canadians seem to forget that April can get angry, just when you think it’s all over.  I don’t know why they forget this, year after year.  Perhaps it’s wishful thinking.  Regardless, when that last angry storm hit us on April 3 2025, the lack of snow tires on cars that should know better by now, created an actual perfect storm of traffic chaos.

I was at work that morning, and watched as a wet mix of snow and rain suddenly pelted my car from outside.  Although I should have gone home immediately, I ate my lunch and emailed my bosses that I’d be working from home that afternoon.  I wish I had left 30 minutes earlier, but if wishes were horses…I’d probably still got stuck in traffic.

I watched as a pickup truck in front of me, on only the slightest incline, began to skid backwards.  He veered off to the left, and made a U-turn, unable to go up the slightest hill.  Once I crested the hill, I was met with three transport trucks that were completely stuck in the snow and ice.  I had to carefully navigate the space between them in order to proceed.  The hill got steeper, but I had no problem with my snow tires.

It was nerve wracking and I had my dad on the phone the whole time, keeping him up to date with my progress home; he was so worried.

I saw cars pull over to the side of the road just to brush the accumulating snow off their rear and side windows.  I was luckier.  With my dad’s help the day before, we just finished installing new windshield wipers on my car.  They were more than up to the task.

Lessons learned in the winter of 2025:

  1. Working from home alleviates the anxiety aspect of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
  2. Don’t take your winter tires off until mid-April!

Songs:

Buffalo Crows – “Starlord” from Bovonic Empire

Sword – “Unleashing Hell” from Sword III

Stir of Echoes – “Wild Eye” from Stir of Echoes

Blotto – “Secret Agent Man” / “Metalhead” live at Toad’s Place

#1177: Snowpocalypse Now!

RECORD STORE TALES #1177: Snowpocalypse Now!

I haven’t been writing much lately, which is a choice I made in order to avoid the burnouts of the past, and to focus on giving 100% to 50 Years of Iron Maiden.  Doing this series has been a healthy and rewarding experience.

In the last week, my town has been hit with roughly 70 centimetres of snow.  I had not seen snow like this since the 1990s.  It’s quite remarkable!  On Saturday morning, Jen and I went out on a junk food run to stock up for the holiday weekend.  (The junk food lasted about 36 hours.)  We noticed that a lot of the snowbanks were taller than the humans on the sidewalks.  That was before we got hit with another 40 cm.

But here I am, sitting indoors and just marvelling at the winter wonderland.  That is where we break this story down into a mental health detour.

I had to find a new counsellor again, which sucks.  I really like my counsellor now, but she has another maternity leave coming, and it is hard finding a good match.  I did however find a new counsellor earlier this month that I think is going to work out.  I am optimistic.

Perhaps because of that optimism, I had a revelation the other day.  It goes back five years, to when Covid began.

We were all forced to adapt.  We were all stuck indoors.  Some of us had to work from home.  Everyone bought webcams.  Anyone that could work from home during that time, probably did at least once.  Now, working from home policies are pretty standard.

And thus it occurred to me:  storms like this don’t have as big an impact on me anymore, because I can just stay home and work.  That is a game changer as far as my winter disorder goes.  I don’t have to go fight the roads just to get to work alive.  I can stay home, and eat pretty much anything I want to.  That’s thanks to Covid.  So there you go.  Perspective.  Five years ago I said I’d have loads of perspective.  There’s one angle.

Of course, for me, working from home recently meant a drop in creativity.  One of the cardinal rules of working from home is:  “Thou shalt not use your creative space as your work space.”  It’s just not good for mental health to mix the two, but I have no choice.  So, as a result, when I’m done sitting in this chair for eight or nine hours of work, I don’t choose to sit in it again for an hour or two more.  It’s not healthy.

I will say one thing, which is that I bought a disappointing Rod Stewart CD this past weekend that I should have spent more time reading the sticker.  You’re In My Heart:  Rod Stewart with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.  Cool, Rod with a symphony.  All my favourite songs like “Reason to Believe” and “You’re In My Heart”.  New versions, I assumed.  Unfortunately, I discovered it’s just another Drastic Symphony.  Except for two new recordings, it’s just old Rod classics with strings dubbed in, just like Def Leppard.  Disappointing!

So, writing hasn’t been a priority when I have this stuff going on, but not everybody watches YouTube so it’s nice to touch base like this once in a while.  Hope you’re doing well.

#1161: The Last Note of Freedom: Season 2024 Comes to an End

RECORD STORE TALES #1161: The Last Note of Freedom: Season 2024 Comes to an End

As much as Record Store Tales is about music, and personal music history, it has also become a related sub-story about mental health and seasonal affective disorder.  It was only during the early years of publishing Record Store Tales that I was forced to deal with it.  This has been a musical journey, and a rocky road of personal struggle, triumph, setbacks, and triumph all over again.  A big part of my problem is my seasonal affective disorder, which I have been open about for years.  I get depressed in the winter:  facts!  My genes are Mediterranean, and I was not built for snow or months of dark skies.  And so, it is sad to say that the cottage season of 2024 is officially at its end.  But what a year it was.

The year of drones!  Every year I want to level up my video-making abilities.  I never know what exactly that will be until I stumble upon it.  One year, it was the discovery of super-slow-mo videos.  This year I took the skies!  My cottage videos were dominated by drones this year.  A satisfying artistic triumph, and a super fun hobby that I highly recommend.

I called this chapter “The Last Note of Freedom” because that’s the song that I chose to use in my last cottage drone video of the year.  The same David Coverdale song that was inexplicably used in my high school graduation slideshow.  It always signals endings and beginnings to me, besides being a great song.  A good one one which to end the summer 2024 flying season.  Maybe this winter we’ll see if I can fly in the snow.

Meanwhile, back at home, this was also the summer that we discovered deep dish pizza.  I have always been curious but wary.  This summer, we found not one but two local places that serve up (and deliver) reasonably authentic deep dish.  (The “delivery” part is important because I don’t really enjoy going out to eat.)  And so, along with droning, deep dish pizza will become a winter activity when we have the blues.  I very much enjoy the thick gooey cheese, and the tomato sauce was a lot more enjoyable than I expected.  While it is not for everyone, and definitely a very different kind of pizza, I would say that deep dish is indeed pizza.  (There’s a whole debate about this.)

More food experiments will happen as we hunker down for another cold winter.  I’ve always wanted to try one of those ramen places, and soup is perfect for winter.  We also have to try a few “indoor steaks” when we start to go into beef withdrawl.

Yes, I’m optimistic.

And so as we say goodbye to summer and the cottage, we look forward to what comes this winter.  Lots of music, lots of new things, and always with a focus on creativity.

 

#1105: Happy Winter Stories Vol. 2 – Snowforts With Bob

RECORD STORE TALES #1105: Happy Winter Stories Vol. 2 – Snowforts With Bob

A sequel to #972:  Snowfort Hippies

There is a saying that the indigenous peoples of the North have umpteen words for “snow”.  While there may be a kernal of truth to that, kids living in Canada know that there are in fact lots and lots and lots of different kinds of snow.

There’s wet globby snow that melts as soon as you pick it up.  There’s packing snow, perfect for snowballs.  There is light powdery snow that won’t clump together.  On one particular winter day in the early 80s, we had hard brick-like snow that allowed us to build an awesome snowfort.

Together with my sister, Bob Schipper and I ventured out one weekend morning with the intent to turn this snow into an igloo.  An igloo of sorts.  We didn’t have the snow or skill to do the roof properly, so we cheated a little.  My sister had a “Mr. Turtle Pool” — a green plastic pool about four or five feet wide.  Flipped upside down, that would make a perfect roof for our igloo.

Side note:  I keep thinking about how good our parents were to us.  We had everything we needed.  Turtle pools, bikes, video games, and most of all, freedom.  Freedom to make a mess of their yard and build this igloo right in the middle of the front lawn.

Snowpants on!  Boots, gloves, scarves, hats, and we were ready.  We had kiddie shovels at the ready.  The three of us started in the morning, and kept going for what seemed like the whole day.  Kids lose track of time, and moments become frozen.  We didn’t wear watches, and I rarely knew what time it was.  We just went out and didn’t come back in until we were bored.

Bob and I began collecting large brick-shaped clumps of snow, and assembling them in a circle – the rough outline of our igloo.  Then we began stacking them, and packing the gaps with more snow.  The snow was not easy to work with that day, and we frequently had to rebuild what we had started, but eventually, layer by layer, our igloo began taking shape.  We left a gap for the door and tested our construction to make sure there was room for three.  Time for a break.  We had a little shelf on one of the inner walls, perfect to hold a couple soda pop cans or drink boxes.   Up and up we built.  Good snow was in short supply as we got higher and higher, and we eventually capped it off with the turtle pool.

We were so proud of our little igloo!  We called mom and dad outside to look.  Unfortunately, they didn’t take any pictures.  It wasn’t like today.

The three of us huddled inside the igloo and relaxed after a day of hard work!  Soon it would be dark and we would have to go inside, but there was always tomorrow!  In the meantime, we sipped our drinks and enjoyed our fort.  We’d pretend there was a roaring storm outside and we were taking shelter from the elements.

The best kind of fun was the kind we made on our own.  We let our creativity flow, we burned our energy up, and we let our imaginations take us wherever it could.  Winter offered opportunities different from summers.  You could build a fort in the summer.  That was the exclusive property of the cold months.  It enabled us to use a different side of our creativity.  Later on, Bob studied architecture.  Take from that what you will.

 

#1100: Happy Winter Stories Vol. 1 – The Empire Strikes Back

Welcome to Homework From My Therapist!  I have a new therapist; she’s nice, and fresh ideas are always helpful as I make the transition from Summer to Fall to Winter.  She asked me about happy winter stories; I said I had several.  She suggested I write them down somewhere I could easily find them, any time I needed a pick-me-up in the winter.  Of course, for me, that means the easiest location is right here.  I am putting on my Empire Strikes Back soundtrack as I type, and I am in the zone.  Let’s do this!

Join me won’t you, for this walk through the winter snow of 1981?

RECORD STORE TALES #1100: Happy Winter Stories Vol. 1 – The Empire Strikes Back

Even as a child I never liked winter, always looking forward to the warmth and freedom of the summer sun.  The winter of 1981, however, offered a new opportunity.  The Empire Strikes Back was the latest thing.  We were collecting all the toys, all the figures, everything we could.  With winter here, we now had the opportunity to dress up as the characters for outside role play!

The snow was deep on our tiny frames that winter.  You truly could imagine you were on the ice planet of Hoth, if not for all the trees.  Winter trips to the cottage offered the more bleak landscape of a completely frozen lake as far as the eye could see, but we didn’t dress in our Star Wars outfits when we made those winter visits.  That was a home activity for the winter weekends!

My sister dressed as Luke Skywalker.  I let her use my glow-in-the-dark “laser sword” for that purpose.  I wanted to be Han.

My dad had made us wooden guns and pistols by cutting shapes out of playwood offcuts and painting rough details.  Perfect for a Solo blaster!  I used my dad’s real leather holster, which even at its tightest was always so loose.  Every good Canadian kid has a pair of snow pants; mine were blue or brown.  I grabbed a pair of goggles from a snorkel set.  To top it off came my pride and joy:  a blue winter coat, with a big furry hood…just like Han Solo’s.  I’d strap on my laser pistol on top of that and trudge out into snow for an hour or two.

Other kids from the neighbourhood would drop in and play other roles.  Someone would have to roar like Chewbacca as I pretended to trade blasts with an Imperial probe droid.

When it was time to board the Millenium Falcon, we’d jump into my dad’s car in the garage.  He didn’t like that part too much, as we fiddled with buttons in a vain attempt to get the Falcon into hyperspace.

When it came time to come in and get warm, we always had the original John Williams soundtrack to keep us entertained with our Kenner action figures.  Even so, the importance of the role play can’t be left out of the story.  It allowed the kids to go out, run around, burn off energy, and be social with other kids as we all re-enacted our favourite Star Wars movies.  We couldn’t just go and pop a video tape into our VCRs.  Few of us had a VCR yet.

The Empire Strikes Back was the newest of the Star Wars movies, and was completely new and exciting to all of us, boys and girls alike.  We’d all seen it.  It was a family thing.  Anyone could jump in and play the role of Chewie,  3P0, Princess Leia, or Darth Vader.  But I was Han Solo.  That was a constant, as non-negotiable as a deal with Jabba the Hutt himself.

We did it all over again in 1982, and 1983.  I think I may have commandeered my mom’s ski goggles at that point, refining my costume.

After Return of the Jedi came out in May of ’83, my focused changed to Luke Skywalker.  Not only was he suddenly badass instead of this whiny disrespectful little shit, but he looked really cool in his new black outfit.  Our role play changed to summer, and I donned a black glove while reclaiming the glow-in-the-dark laser sword as my own.  My sister could be Han Solo this time, but that meant she had to pretend to be blind before I saved her!

Star Wars died down pretty quickly after 1983, and as kids we moved on to other interests as well.  It must be remembered, the length of time we lived with Empire as “current” Star Wars movie.  It came out in spring of 1980, so we were playing Empire and getting Empire toys for Christmas for 1980, ’81, and 1982!  For me, that was age 8 to age 10, the most important span of years in a kid’s childhood!  For my sister, it was ages 4 to 7, almost as important!  That chunk of our lives coincided with a cool “sweet spot” of Star Wars.  Not only did we get the best movie of the series, with some of the best toys and figures of the line, but also got three years of yearning anticipation and fear!  Was Darth Vader really Luke’s father?  How would they save Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt?  What was Jabba the Hutt?  We had to use our imaginations and we imagined every scenario we could in our games.

Those were good times in some cold, wet winters.  Let’s not forget them, nor the warmth of a hot chocolate after we kicked the snow off our boots and hung our snow pants up to dry.  That would have been a good winter Saturday in 1981.

 

#1096: Winter Woes: The Shovel Incident

RECORD STORE TALES:  #1096: Winter Woes: The Shovel Incident

Expanding upon a story told in Record Store Tales Part 18.

Winters at the Record Store were messy!  We had a little front vestibule – a glass enclosure that you had to enter before coming in the store.  In the winter, it was always sloppy.  Filled with slush, water, mud, dirt.  It was impossible to keep clean for very long.  Customers would come in, stamp the snow off their boots, and this would splatter snow and mud on the glass.  In the winter time, as soon as you cleaned it, it would get filthy again.  The mats in there were always soaked wet from slush and snow.

In that front vestibule was a snow shovel.  We often had to shovel in front of the store after a bad snow.  Pretty standard winter gear in Canada.  The front vestibule was the sensible place to store the messy shovel during those times, rather than create a puddle of melting slush in the back.

I was working one afternoon when three to four aimless teenagers were killing time in the store.  I hate to paint all teenagers with one brush, I was once one too, but I was never as snotty as the kids that I dealt with that day.  Like most teenagers, they were just there to kill time.  No money was spent.

I kept an eye on them on their way out, and saw one of them grab my shovel and make a break for it!

Who steals a shovel?  A fucking shovel?

I ran outside into the cold and yelled.

“HEY!  HEY YOU!  BRING THAT BACK!  THAT’S OUR SHOVEL!”

Having been busted, the kid turned around and said, “I was just trying to see how fast I could run…with a shovel…”

What what?  A true WTF moment and one that had me lose faith in the next generation one more time.

I remember one other detail that must be relayed.  I sometimes felt that the Big Boss Man did not have my back, and this was just one other incident.  I called him and told him what happened, and his reaction was not what I expected.  I expected a “Good job,” or “Thanks for keeping your eyes open.”  Instead I received, “Mike…you probably shouldn’t have reacted that way.”

What?  Now there are two WTF moments!

If the kid had stolen a $5 CD and got away with it, I’d be scolded for not paying attention.  He tried to steal a $20 shovel, and I’m the one who got in shit?

I’ll never understand the upper management I dealt with for those years.  And I’ve never had to deal with managers like that since.  Tells you something.

WTF indeed!

 

#1080: S.A.D. Origins

RECORD STORE TALES #1080: S.A.D. Origins

As long as I can remember, I’ve hated winter, and craved the warm rays of summer.  My dominant genes are Mediterranean.  My not-so-distant ancestors made their living on the balmy coasts of Sicily, and Amalfi before that.  I was never cut out for the cold months.

I took hockey lessons as a kid.  I hated putting on those uncomfortable skates and all that cold-weather gear.  “Why do I have to take hockey lessons, mom?”

“Every good Canadian boy should know how to skate,” she answered.

Why?  Why couldn’t I just stay indoors where it was warm and I didn’t have to bundle up in three layers to go outside?  Hockey lessons never appealed, and to this day, I can’t really skate.  I mean, I can go forward…I can turn…but I can’t stop.  So, I can’t really skate.  Do I care?  No.  It’s been 27 years since I was last on skates.  More than half my life ago.

I can’t ski.  I can’t even get on the chairlift properly.  I haven’t been on skis since…1986 maybe?  No interest whatsoever.  We would build snowforts and take toboggans downhill, but I would much rather it be warm outside, riding my bike and playing in the sun.  The winter was always wet and messy.

My earliest memory of seasonal affective disorder was studying a globe with my dad as a kid.  I’ve long been obsessed with maps.  I’d study maps until the cows came home.  This time, we were looking at a globe.  He was explaining how the analemma on the globe worked: that figure-eight line that tracked the movement of the sun over the 12 months of the year.  The line can be traced by finding the position of the Sun as viewed from the same position on Earth at the same time every day.  In the winter, the sun can be found travelling the line in the southern hemisphere on our globe, but my dad explained, once December 21 came and went, the sun would be making its way back north again.  I would look at the globe and find the date on the analemma.  It sure made it feel like summer was coming, to see it translated into mere centimeters on a globe.

It’s quite remarkable that I was feeling those feelings as a kid.  Not even 10 years old yet?  Counting the days until the sun was back in the northern hemisphere.  To the days when I shed my outer skin of parkas and boots, and went back down to a T-shirt and shorts, basking in the comfort of the Canadian summer.  Seasonal affective disorder has been with me at least that long.

Another memory:  winter time, putting on my layers to go outside.  By the time all the layers were on, I didn’t want to go outside anymore.  My parents really struggled with trying to keep me active in the winter.  I wished I could have hibernated through it all.

I wonder if the added component here was school?  I hated school.  I hated the bullies.  The summer represented time away from all of that.  I wonder how much that fed into my seasonal affective disorder?

I guess that’s something I can explore with my mental health team this winter, as I try new strategies to stave off the S.A.D.ness.  We have some tentative plans and vitamin D is on the menu.  Let’s make the most of it.

Wish me luck.

 

#1054: The Darkest Winter

RECORD STORE TALES #1054: The Darkest Winter

I think I’m going to go ahead and declare winter “over”.  In Canada that can be a rather meaningless gesture, but I’m going to do it anyway.  So let’s talk about mental health during the winter of 2022-23.

Winter started mild.  Most importantly though, I had this plan, see….

Well you know what they say about plans.

It was a simple plan, and it did work for the first part of the winter.  Because I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, winter can be the most difficult time of year for me.  Winter in Canada can be unpleasant.  Dark, wet, cold, often all three at once.  The nights are long.  The days are spent in an office.  When I arrived at work, it was still dark.  When I left for home, it was already dark.  This takes its toll.  So what was the plan, then?  The plan was to try and see winter through new eyes.  My American friend MarriedandHeels has never experienced winter.  I thought it would be fun to share images and videos of things she doesn’t see every day, like giant icicles, road salt, snowbanks and all the rest of it.  For a time, it worked.  The novelty of it was really fun.  Some of these snowbanks were mountains!  Her reactions were entertaining (especially to the idea of road salt).  However, as the months dragged it, this wore itself out on me.  Every day seemed like a repeat of the last.  The snow lingered and lingered on, accumulating and dominating the images.

Things started to go to hell.  Everyone in my family except my dad has had Covid, including my 98 year old grandmother.

Oh, my grandmother.

She took ill early this year.  We thought was was gone, twice.  I wrote her eulogy!  I came home from work early and wrote a eulogy…and she keeps hanging on.  I have grieved her twice this year already!  But she is currently doing well.

My sister has been sick, my mom has been sick, my dad is feeling the years take their toll on his body.

I’ve been sick twice, once with stomach ailments and once with Covid.  Same with Jen, but she’s had a much longer dance with Lady ‘Rona.  The isolation also takes its toll.

I would say I fell apart a couple times this winter.  Two people thought I should see a psychiatrist and get put on happy pills.  I have tried happy pills before and they do not work for me.  They wreak havoc on my stomach and I prefer to do this without prescriptions.  MarriedandHeels expressed her concern that I had fallen into a depression, and I agreed with her.

But then things started to change.  The clocks went forward, giving more daylight during the leisure hours.  The snow started to finally melt.  The birds are returning.  And soon the snow tires will be off!  And that can only mean one thing.  Cottage season!

I’m starting to feel like myself again.

This has been without a doubt the most brutal winter since the winter of cancer, 2018.  Did you know it was actually the darkest winter in Ontario in 80 years?  That means it was the darkest winter most of us have ever experienced.

Winter took its toll, did its damage, but I won.  I am still standing and it is gone.

I won.